


I(’m) Miss-Counting Stars

by GothMoth



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Gen, Heroism, Holiday Truce Gift, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, It's A Hard Knock Life For Us, Major Character Injury, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Mild Gore, Outer Space, Phantom Planet But With A DisaSTAR, Phantom Planet Rewrite Sorta, Self-Destruction, Self-Reflection, Self-Sacrifice, Stars, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:07:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22075213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GothMoth/pseuds/GothMoth
Summary: Danny’s always been a stargazer, even more so when life (or half-life) got tougher. It made for a great coping mechanism, but there’s a reason over-reliance is unhealthy.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 76





	I(’m) Miss-Counting Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Holiday Truce 2019 gift for @ax-n-shious on Tumblr.  
> 🎆 New Year's surprise! 🎇 This fic took a trip, grew legs, and flew away from me while cackling at the stars.   
> I went with ‘Danny chilling, just, watching the stars’. Stars are wonderful things and I’m a major stargazer myself! 

Stars were something he had adored all his life. He’s sure he can even remember the first time he laid his tiny baby eyes on them. Bright, beautiful, and twinkling; yet so very far away. So utterly out of reach. Even still they filled his vision with their vast quantities. Endlessly filling up every night sky for the rest of his days. 

They had been a constant in his life. Not just his love of them and nights spent watching from his place on the ground. Still oh so very far away even when he scaled up the tallest buildings his home had to offer, just to have a closer look. A look more free from anything other than the night sky in his peripherals. But the real true constant about them, was how they never truly changed. The stars were always there. Regardless of what happened or changed. Regardless of days where he hurt or hated the world. Regardless of drifting apart family members or fights. There they floated in the sky every night, like his own personal Eden waiting for him. Sure he knew it wasn’t _really_ all for him. Anyone else could see them. Just not from the same angle, not with the same vision or mindset. So he was alone in his unique appreciation and childhood wonder. 

They were also always out of reach. Up far above his head. Surrounded by clouds and the moon. Unfathomably far away. Their touch or truly being able to see one in its entire glory, was absolutely out of reach. There was something nice about that. Something comforting. Something so distant, so out of reach. Something that could never truly touch him or be touched by him. Something he couldn’t truly see or been seen by. It meant they could never hurt him...and that he could never hurt _them_. 

Sure he dreamed of reaching them, trained and yearned to. But it was just that, _a dream_. A pipe dream at best. Besides, even if he did grasp that goal -everyone so sure he could and would- it would hardly matter. The beautiful wondrous twinkling things would be as unreachable as ever. Too far for any rocket ship to truly reach. With his skin and eyes always to wear the barrier of a space-worthy suit or the metal of a ship. Never having true real contact with the vast expanse of space. So unchanged and unchanging they’d be. All that would change is where he could gape at them from. How unique he could make his view of them. He may change, his sight may change, his way of life may change, and those around him may change. But the stars, they’re stagnant. So regardless of it all, he could always look up and it would all be the same. So that he could be with them for a time, exist outside of time and its changes. Let everything else fall away and pretend everything was as it was when he first laid his eyes upon them. 

Before the childhood stories of ghosts that interrupted every other full nights rest with nightmares. Before other children lashed him with words and fists. Before uncles that he just wouldn’t see any more. Before his sister learned how to do _everything_ the two of them needed. Before home went from a baby's playpen to a glowing biohazard. And long before the portal sapped away all his parents time, years of their lives; and eventually... half of his. The stars got to be his Before. So he’d repay their glory and home in his life with his endlessly watchful eyes. As they were constant things, so too were they his constants.

Or at least they were. They used to be. That ‘real true constant’ stopped being ‘real’ or ‘true’. The far off comfort, the unchanging nature, the inherent inability to be touched; had winked out like a dying star. 

That accident, The Accident, had changed so much. Changed everything if he felt like being honest with himself. The stars were the one thing excluded from that ‘everything’. Or was anyway. 

He had taken solace in them. Sure his DNA had changed, his species had changed; and sure, the last clinging strands of his idea of ‘safety’ had been brutalised. But they were _there_. They were _the same_. Then that ‘were’ became a little too literally past tense. 

At first his flight, his ability to completely nullify gravities pull, had been something of pure glory. Not even the tallest building could compare to this. To how close he could be. To the angle he could gaze at them from. To how he could really feel like he was part of them, floating in a vast darkness with them. But they were still oh so wonderfully distant, still so untouchable, still unchanged. And that had been a fact to him, of course it had. Until it wasn’t. 

He didn’t really get to appreciate his first trip into outer space. Too busy with a fight, with the villain of the week, with the sorta love of his (half)life, with the world and its complications and its changes. To really star gaze amongst the stars. In outer space. In their land. In their world. Their vast sea of oxygen vacant black. But that night? After his whirlwind of a ‘life’ had settled down? His mind calmed as much as it ever could those days and with his head hitting the pillow? Well his eyes had snapped open and he knew what he _had_ to do. And once he got up there, existed in the space of stars. Floated there just as defying of gravity and exposed to all that _space_ , as his glorious stars. It was like he had actualised with his very being. Had become one with the stars, become one of them. And so thus they became less unobtainable, more something he knew. But he hadn’t really minded, he still couldn’t touch them after all. As much as he could experience existence in a state similar to how they existed, it was hardly the same and it was free from any kind of true physical contact. They were still things out of reach. He was closer, yes he was, compared to any other living creature. Or half living for that matter. But they were still far off. Still those imperceptibly massive twinkling things from his childhood. Still the same sea of soft glow that comforted him when everything hurt just a little too much. They still couldn’t see his weakness, nor morn over it. They still couldn’t be bruised, broken, or snuffed out as yet more collateral to his existence. 

But he...he should have known better. He had learned the lesson that ‘inevitable’ didn’t exist. He should have known ‘unbreakable’ and ‘unreachable’ and ‘unchangeable’, were things that didn’t exist either. Should have known that ‘comfort’ wasn’t something that was supposed to exist within anything remotely close to him. He was here to, was made to, break and bleed and _suffer_. Why should he be allowed any reprieve from that? Even in or from something as distant and aged as massive balls of burning gas. 

But he did learn his lesson, so that was something. That night, that honestly had no right being called a night anymore. Nights were supposed to be secretive and wondrous. But maybe that night did have its place being called ‘night’. Night’s when all our demons come knocking after all. When our broken hopes and our mountains of secrets come to suffocate us in our beds. Though for him night had hardly been that. They’d been stars and freedom, then battles and still yet freedom. Night was the time where Daniel James Fenton got to _win_. So it just wasn’t right to him, to lose the greatest truth and comfort in his existence in the dead of night; surrounded by glowing stars, unhampered by a single cloud. The only thing floating in the atmosphere being him. Who was a glowing thing himself. That night, like many others since his DNA was rewritten by the apathetic will of an entire dimension, it was him who was the sole cloud. It made him an easy target. Not that he minded nor cared really. Valerie did though, always. And logically he should be worried, cautious, about that fact. But since saving little Elle, the spitfire clone that had become something of a little star to him. His little star. Valerie has been something approaching kind to him. And he did oh so wonder how she viewed the far off stars, the vast of space, the solace night; from that board of hers, her little flight machine. Of course it wouldn’t be the same, everyone alone in their personal drinking in of all they see. 

So he hadn’t minded nor torn his eyes away from the twinkling stars when she had flown near him. Maybe he should have. Maybe things would have been different. It wouldn’t have been, thinking otherwise was a fool's game. But life and death was a game and he was always their personal fool. 

Her words, still clear to him now, had been both jarring and warming. 

_“Funny thing, from the ground I thought you were a star”._

Her tone, something so unforgettable, made it clear she meant her words. And that was the thing, wasn’t it? Those words rang true, he had known as much, had wistfully believed as much actually. He was as much a star as the ones that peppered the sky, endlessly far above his lair. Sure any could see the most basic of similarities. The floating, the glowing, his whites against his blacks. But he also knew it was more. So much more. To them, to the mortals, the full humans. He was beyond them, an otherworldly creature they could hardly fathom. He was an unbreakable force, the warrior that never ever failed in battle. He was a nightly sight, his glow against the backdrop of night. He was a comfort, flashing smiles and friendly waves. He was...a constant, ever-present whenever he was needed. But they could touch him, speak to him, truly see him... _harm him_. So it wasn’t truly the same. Similar to the stars he was, but with just one too many differences. What a fool he had been. _They weren’t different at all._

He had nodded to her then without taking his eyes off the skies, and she had taken the gesture for what it was. Joining him in casting their eyes upon the crowd of stars above. Watched the swirling dance of dying light eons away, that one could only just barely pick up if they stayed still long enough. And that’s when it all came undone. When that first stray fabric of his fragile belief in the constant and in comfort, had been snagged by a stray DALV Space Analysis Station and begun unravelling. As a far off star, that wasn’t quite as far off as many would be comfortable with, began a crash course. Of course all it would really crash into, really smash apart, was Danny’s one lone constant. Perhaps if it had been a meteor instead. Hadn’t been something that was supposed to be untouchable. Hadn’t been something that was supposed to never change. Hadn’t been something that wasn’t supposed to _hurt him_. Perhaps he’d feel less hollowed out in the end. Still have something untouched by his existence. Still have something unbroken by what qualifies as his luck. Because the stars couldn’t be his Before, his unchanged comfort, when they became the next villain of the week. Became one of his battles and wars, instead of the backdrop and reprieve from them. 

The two, halfa and hunter, had been there watching that very backdrop, taking in that very reprieve. When he had known something was _off_. When he had to look at the skies, at the stars, like he did the streets of home; in search of the threat he knew was there. One star was just a little too big. Was _different_. Had _changed_. It hadn’t been long after that when the world began its great alarm. A star was falling, and it was falling _into them_. 

With that news, he had fallen too. Impacted the ground, with flesh no worse for the wear. But he had shattered. His comfort, everything that had been right with his world, his dreams; hit the pavement and blew apart as an unseen, untouched, unheard supernova. He couldn’t lay there, couldn’t stay, and just _watch_ his view of the stars crumble and rain down in the form of one single star. He _broke_. And then, he disappeared. 

As he lost his constant so too did Amity. Terrified and doing anything to bury their heads in the sand, over their missing hero. Vlad had given them everything they could ever need to crush and pulverise their worry. Masters Blasters. Failed missions. _The Reveal_. Holding a world hostage. The elder halfa flying off to ‘save’ them. But in the end, it just hadn’t mattered. All ghosts have Cores. Even the crazed and half-formed. But Vlad’s was all heat and flame; a Core of fire. And stars, they were things of near heavenly and apocalyptic infernos. And when you throw a lit match at a forest fire, the stronger cannibalises the weaker. Consumes it to fuel its own flames. Maybe if things had been different, the elder halfa could have gone to live on in the void of space, amongst the stars. To wander just as they do. Instead of combusting in instantaneous destruction. 

But this end, the fall of a deranged madman with delusions of grandeur, became a form of duct tape for Danny to patch his shards back together with. In a sense, Vlad being burnt to ash and nothing was a return of comfort. They, the star, still couldn’t be touched. Everything else was _wrong_ and _changed_ , but there was that little ounce of something like a constant. And he...he had a battle to fight. Had a bit more of himself to lose. Had to give up just a little bit more by refusing to truly give up. _He had to be Phantom_. 

Of course though a fool he may be, he hadn’t been enough of one to think that the burning star could be made to pass harmlessly through the Earth. Or even get arguably anywhere near the planet. Vlad’s plan would have never worked, no matter what. Damned from the start. Passing a star intangibly through a planet would just destroy it. The whole planet to drown in its heat and fire and blinding light; instead of just one small lost man. So Danny had faced it like he did everything, head-on and shouldering the awaiting suffering. In another time he would have been able to stargaze away the hurt after saving the day, the usual. Throw his suffered body and mind into the vast of space and unreachable twinkling things. But times not kind, and it’s treated him in kind. 

And it’s funny, almost enough to be a comfort, how Amity Parks returning constant that was Phantom, made everyone more okay. While he had flown off towards becoming less okay. Toward the star. One that he would _see_. That he would _touch_. That he would _change_. That he would _harm_. The last may not have been a guarantee, but that’s simply how things went for him. 

Logically taking the same actions that obliterated the only other like him was foolish. Getting close and... _touching_. But he was ice at his Core. Cold to sooth heat and frost to chase away flames. Sure it might have eaten him up all the same, part of him had been content with that potential. But he would change its course, send the star to orbit and soar elsewhere, before he’d even consider letting himself succumb to anything. So up he had gone, to grab at the wisping and ragging flames; had tried to ignore how it had looked oh so much like how his ghostly tail would move, giving off light just the same as well. 

It had been bright, it had been beautiful. It had been all he had always known any star to be. But it hadn’t been so small or so far away. It had been part of his existence, his surroundings, in more than just name and adoration then. More than just something his eyes gazed upon from a comfortable distance. It had been here, truly been with him. And as he had grasped his hands to it, had really _touched it_. _A star_. He had felt like a dying star himself. Like those broken chunks of himself had melted to a gooey mess and seeped out of him. He had wanted to cry. To sob and choke. But Phantom can’t do that. Not under the mortal worlds watchful eyes. His constant, his comfort, his one unchanging truth; may had been tearing down around him, but he had refused to let the mortals lose Phantom as their constant. He was good for that at least. 

But like always nothing ever went as he planned, as he hoped, as he wanted. Instead cold and heat had raged against each other. Chipped away at each other. His body, his ice, and the stars body, it’s fire; went to war, space the battlefield. Tainted even the void of space. And as he had watched, having always held levels of fear of his power, he had wanted to wilt away. Like a fresh lily tossed into a snowbank. As the star had shrunk and shrivelled, its energy and fuel being eaten up by his Core. By the cold of his ghostly flesh. He knows he did cry then, the tears turning to hot steam and cold mist in an instant. Till he had been staring down at a small seemingly insignificant ball of fire. Of all his ideas of comforts and constants and freedom and then knowingly misplaced peace. Before it had flickered out, like a candlewick between wet fingers. The last burning candle of his mental safety net being drowned and buried ten feet underground in the process. 

His arms had fallen limp while even from so far away he had been certain he could hear the cheering mortals. They were saved, like always. While he had barely had the mental fortitude to keep himself attached at the seams. He had let himself plummet back to earth, had passed his fall off as exhaustion, and slinked away. Had ignored their desire to congratulate or heal him. Had ignored the sounds of claps and cheers and words that had seemed more like gibberish than anything he spoke. His mind had vacated the crowd long before his body had, but both left with haste. And even once he had been alone, he had ignored his physical state. The burnt flesh, that surely smelled something foul. The patchwork of clinging chunks of jumpsuit. The brittle and crunchy texture of his bones. The odd organ he actually kept around in ghost form, that had been boiled. 

So in that state is exactly how he finds himself now. Floating just out of sight, high above his lair. Just watching the stars, as they seemingly spin around and around far faster than could ever be possible. His eyes blurring and feeling like every little star, so very far away and out of touch, were seconds from actively shooting bullet holes through every inch of his flesh. Leaving everything he was to crumple with fleeting dream of lies. Makes sense, he guesses, lies made up most of his self and days. Those very lies guided him, like the stars to a lost man at sea. But stars have the option to ignore where they point. Because they _can’t touch you. Can’t hurt you_. But his current state screams how that’s a lie, and lies drag you with them like the tide. So he lets himself float wherever his body seemed it wanted to go. Where the spinning stars wanted to pull him. Some imperceptible ghostly instinct being all that kept him within the bounds of his lair. Occasionally feeling the burn of the stratosphere when he winds up a little too high. Each burn reminding him of that one star all over again. The one he held in the palm of his hands and snuffed out. The one star he had gazed at, that had gazed directly back. 

**End.**


End file.
